Before I was 27 years old I didnt understand how to lose weight. I imagined that dieting was the only route to success, but I was wrong. I learnt much later that the key to healthy and fast weight loss is to tune in to your body and listen to what it really needs.

I think back to all the diets I ever went on and all the misery I went through, and am still saddened that I didnt notice the answers staring me in the face. The behaviors I needed to adopt were already in the minds of those who were slim, healthy and happy. I just needed to find out what those behaviors were. A word of caution at this point, however. You cant just adopt the one or two habits that suit you. They work together as a network and youll need all of them if youre going to change your behavior and live slim.

Modeling Behavior

Over the millennia that human beings have existed they have evolved an ability to pass on skills and know-how to others by watching, mimicking and learning through practice. It therefore makes sense that if you want to be able to do anything excellently, you need to find someone who is already doing it excellently so that you can do what they do. Did you have a role model as you were growing up? Someone whose image, personality and behavior you admired? Did you try to copy them in some way their clothes, their hair, the way they talked perhaps, or their ideals and beliefs? Modeling behavior is an advanced variation of the same idea. Modeling strategies involve not only how someone approaches and performs a task, but also the thoughts and beliefs they have about themselves and the task as well.

By adopting a successful persons beliefs, strategies, values and language you can start to achieve their levels of success more rapidly. If you want to be slim, it makes total sense to find someone who is already maintaining their weight well and healthily and to model their habits to achieve the same results.

Eventually these behaviors will become your new habits and you will become just as successful as they are. You might also find that you begin to design a new strategy of your own that works best for you. If you allow yourself the freedom to choose whats right for you and the space to adopt an entirely new attitude or behavior, this new strategy has every chance of success.

Warning

Beware of modeling someone who has gone to dieting extremes, no matter how prominently they feature in the public eye. For example, aspiring to Size 0 is not a healthy choice it is a fast route to an eating disorder. Far from making you look beautiful and elegant, it makes you look ill, weak and desperate. Work on ways to improve your self-esteem and youll ensure that you never hurt yourself like that in order to get you needs met.